Date of Return: January 7, 2393Date of IPO Induction: January 7, 2393Division of service: Special Assignment 1 (Experts of Justice)Grade: Grey LensmanTest of Light administered: January 7, 2393Other special qualifications/certifications: - Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, New Avalon Institute of Science (2395) - International Police Overtechnologist First Class - Is Nikola Tesla, for Christ's sake

Description: Nikola Tesla is a tall, thin human male with slicked-back black hair, a gaunt, mustached face, penetrating eyes, and a serious mien. He usually dresses in the style of a gentleman of some means from late-19th-century Earth. He often gives the impression of being somewhat distracted, though what is distracting him is rarely apparent to the outside observer.

Notes: Tesla was Earth's greatest scientist and engineer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He understood physical and energy-related phenomena that the "mainstream" of human science would not fully grasp - in some cases, would not even perceive or acknowledge - until after Earth's 1999 First Contact with Salusia gave the planet's scientists access to the greater galactic body of knowledge.

As a result, Tesla's theories were often ridiculed in his time, and his genius was frequently confused with madness. That he seemed odd to his contemporaries should not be surprising, given that he was dealing in concepts that, in many cases, Earth's languages did not yet have words for. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that many of his experiments resulted in various teleportation and time manipulation mishaps, introducing errors into the subjective sequence of encounters people had with him. He often gave the impression of having forgotten people simply because, from his frame of reference, he hadn't met them yet.

Similarly, many of his supposedly compulsive behaviors were in fact perfectly reasonable precautions. Early teleportation systems reacted very poorly to significant changes in body mass between transmission and recall - hence Tesla's supposedly "obsessive-compulsive" attention to precisely how much he ate. And so forth.

At any rate, Tesla was poorly understood during his lifetime, partly because of the above factors, and partly because he eventually realized that he wasn't going to be able to articulate most of his revelations to his contemporaries, and eventually just stopped trying. He did not, as biographies from shortly after his death often suggest, disdain his fellow Earthmen for their relative stupidity; he simply despaired of ever getting his point across to them without a common frame of reference.

Exacerbating his problems was the fact that materials science lagged far behind his engineering prowess and his scientific ability. He was frequently derided as a fraud after announcing some discovery, only to have his demonstration of whatever phenomenon he had predicted fail. In fact, nearly all of these failures can now be traced directly to the unavailability of the materials used in modern devices producing similar effects, most notably obscurium-319 and Teslite.

Tesla died in 1943, impoverished and largely forgotten. Only after First Contact, when Earth's engineers and scientists realized that much of what Tesla had been trying to show and tell the world in his time was really possible after all, did his image truly turn around. By the mid-21st century, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest Earthmen of all time.

Upon his death, Tesla was personally conducted to Valhalla by Skuld Ravenhair, the newly invested Norn of the Future, in her first official act as captain of the Valkyrie. Restored to the prime of his youth by the golden apples of Asgard, he served as technologist to the Æsir and as the young Skuld's tutor in the advanced electromechanical arts. In the aftermath of the 2390 Ragnarok, he was part of the team of Engineers who restored Yggdrasil, the World-Engine, to operating condition after it was seriously damaged by Loki.

In recognition of his heroic service on this and several other occasions, Tesla was given the opportunity to return to mortal life, if he so chose. In 2393 he did so, returning to Midgard on the 450th anniversary of his death in order to join the newly formed International Police Organization as a technologist and high-order operative.

Nikola Tesla is, pure and simple, one of the greatest inventors who ever lived. His understanding of electromagnetism, hyperphysics, dimensional engineering, and superparticle dynamics remain ahead of their time in the 25th century. Energy shields, projected energy weapons, faster-than-light travel, teleportation, matter/energy conversion, electromechanical systems of all kinds - these are the bread-and-butter concepts of a great swathe of modern technology, and Tesla is their master. If it's a piece of equipment in common use today, chances are Tesla at least designed a version of it in the 1800s, and odds are very good that, given access to good enough materials and tools, he can build a better version than the top-of-the-line model available today.

His mental abilities do not imply physical weakness, either. Though he seems fragile because of his gaunt build, Tesla is very fit and surprisingly strong. Even in his original lifetime there were stories of his physical prowess - he was famously involved in a fight (some historians characterize it as a riot) aboard a steamship, a brawl among the ship's crew that saw Tesla one of the few men standing at the end. Trained in various arts of combat (largely just for the novelty of the experience) during his time in Valhalla, augmented by his own inventions, he is an Expert-class combatant not to be taken lightly. Those bionic parts on Big Fire's Shockwave Alberto are there because the Magnificent Ten member took Tesla for a creampuff engineer in 2395.

With these things and countless others in his bag of tricks - to say nothing of the incredible machines he's built that are too big to carry around - Tesla is an unpredictable and highly dangerous foe.

Nikola Tesla is a serious-minded man who lives for his work and his inventions, but he is not, as his contemporaries often thought during his first life, mad. He is simply possessed of incredible powers of concentration. Tesla can focus past almost any distraction in the pursuit of his goal of the moment, whatever that goal may be. Though many people find this intensity offputting, he is a loyal friend to those who take the time to understand him. He does not automatically disdain his intellectual inferiors, but does insist that they at least do their best to follow as much of what he's talking about as they can. He seems somewhat taken aback, despite the centuries he's had to get used to the idea, that he's a hero to countless technologists, inventors, and general fans of the wonders he has wrought.

Current assignment: As an Expert of Justice, Nikola Tesla undertakes missions at the express request of the Chief. When not in the field, he works on independent researches under the auspices of the Office of the Chief Technologist.

End of Text Data Extractthank you for using theBabylon Project Galactic Database

I love the description of Tesla as, simply put, a man that was born too early for society to benefit from his brilliance, or even understand what he could offer them. The bit where he served as Skulds tutor was a nice touch.

Probably more like the test meter hitting its stop: "the actual value could be anything large, we don't have a stick that long to measure it against".

Our own IQ tests break down at about 150ish; anything above that is largely guesswork on the part of the people who wrote the test, due to an inability to calibrate the scale above that point. It seems likely that the Wolfe-DeKok index would suffer a similar problem - if you can't find enough people that smart to measure, you've got nothing meaningful to compare the test results with.

>>Adjusted Wolfe-DeKok Intelligence Index: 500>>Something tells me it doesn't GET any higher. >>>Other special qualifications/certifications:>> - Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, New Avalon Institute of Science >>(2395) >> - International Police Overtechnologist First Class >> - Is Nikola Tesla, for Christ's sake >>*Breaks utterly* >>I love the description of Tesla as, simply put, a man that was born >too early for society to benefit from his brilliance, or even >understand what he could offer them.

Dunno if this was intentional, but you've re-created Tesla in such a respectful light that the numerous accolades and honors accorded to him come rolling off the page as I read this -- like a palpable wave of respect. I am now inspired with a malignant disdain for his detractors.

Great entry, Gryph.

-T.Zukumori=============================================

"What happened to this one here?""I did.""Uh-huh... and how did you subdue him?""I know kung fu."--cropped from Titans: Convergence by Benjamin D. Hutchins

"Now, I know what you're thinking, old boy. 'Did he fire for six seconds, or only five?' Well, to be perfectly frank, in all the kerfuffle I've quite lost track myself, what? But bearing in mind that this is a Manmelter 3600ZX, the most powerful handgun in the Empire, and would reduce your entire body mass to free carbon and hydrogen with the slightest pressure of my forefinger upon the trigger mechanism, you're behooved to ask yourself one question: 'Am I feeling fortunate?' Well? Are you, dear chap?"

> - The Electro-Gravitic Local Field Modulation Matrix Harness, a >personal flight device that alters the local gravity vector to produce >fully controllable high-speed motion in three directions

Ooh, practical curved-space drive. A fighter craft built around that would be interesting - if it isn't based on a big engine that pushes from the back, then it doesn't have to look like a damned airplane.

>> - The Electro-Gravitic Local Field Modulation Matrix Harness, a >>personal flight device that alters the local gravity vector to produce >>fully controllable high-speed motion in three directions >>Ooh, practical curved-space drive. A fighter craft built around that >would be interesting - if it isn't based on a big engine that pushes >from the back, then it doesn't have to look like a damned airplane.

(Yes, the Queadluun-Rau does have thrusters, but it accomplishes its maneuverability through an application of a similar principle. And you have to admit it doesn't look much like an airplane. Not that I, for one, find anything wrong with space fighters that look like airplanes - you may note that the UF universe is full of them. The more remarks like that you make, the more I wonder... :)

>Given some of his other inventions, I can't help but wonder if he >invented the infamous Thunderbolt ammunition on a slow weekend in the >1870s.

I dunno about that. I suppose it's possible, but Thunderbolts are just an evolution of a well-understood technology, just making it smaller. Tesla's designs, aside from being a good bit quirkier, seem to utilize physics that aren't well understood by the scientists of the day. That IS his hallmark, after all.

"They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, 'nice try'." --Lezard

>>Given some of his other inventions, I can't help but wonder if he >>invented the infamous Thunderbolt ammunition on a slow weekend in the >>1870s. >>I dunno about that. I suppose it's possible, but Thunderbolts are just >an evolution of a well-understood technology, just making it smaller. >Tesla's designs, aside from being a good bit quirkier, seem to utilize >physics that aren't well understood by the scientists of the day. That >IS his hallmark, after all. >

I'd guess that he didn't - since Thunderbolt ammo, if I remember correctly, is built around a tiny core of antimatter, it wouldn't have been possible for him to invent it in the 1870s, when particle physics were in their infancy, or possibly still gestating.

Peter Eng--I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

This is Nikola Tesla we're talking about. He might have invented it in the 1879's... but he didn't. We know this because there weren't any nuclear-scale detonations in the 1870's on Earth and, presumably, on UF-Earth.

>>Upon his death, Tesla was personally conducted to Valhalla by Skuld Ravenhair, the newly invested Norn of the Future, in her first official act as captain of the Valkyrie. Restored to the prime of his youth by the golden apples of Asgard, he served as technologist to the Ęsir and as the young Skuld's tutor in the advanced electromechanical arts.<<

That would mean - and this is more by way of getting the chronology straight in my own mind than anything else - that Skuld took over the Valkyrie at a remarkably young age (for an Aes, that is). I remember from Twilight that the UFverse version of the canonical events of AMS occurred on Tomodachi sometime during the Golden Age when Gryphon was on sabbatical from the WDF, teaching military history there at NIT (shouldn't that have been Hotohori?) I think it's pretty clearly stated that when he first encountered Skuld, she was the age range (apparent, anyway) that we know from the canonical material and had advanced to adolescence by the time she and Gryphon met on 03F8 during the Exile.

In any case, Dr. Tesla is one hella impressive guy if the depth and range of his knowledge is such that he becomes a teacher and mentor to the Norn of Tomorrow. I wonder if he had anything to do with inspiring Skuld's more, uh, idiosyncratic technological forays in her younger days, such as Mr. Bug Zapper and that doohickey that got Keiichi and Bell trapped in that infinite space where they met the creature known as Schrodinger's Whale (at least, in the original manga).

>> that doohickey that got Keiichi and Bell trapped in that infinite space where >> they met the creature known as Schrodinger's Whale (at least, in the original >> manga).>>I always assumed that was more influenced by her meeting a fun-loving >man with an odd scarf and a Police Box. :) >

Why not both? :P Now thats a thought.. The Doctor, Skuld and Mr. Tesla travelling the UF-verse in the Tardis :O

_____________________________________________A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. THERE IS ONLY WAR.-kinda makes sense if you think about it.